“Again. I want to go check on Lily.”

“Do you mind if I come with you?”

“No. Come ahead.” They started upstairs together. “Most likely it’ll stop before we get there. That’s the pattern.”

“There were two nursemaids, three governesses, a housekeeper, an under-housekeeper, a total of twelve housemaids, a personal maid, three female kitchen staff between 1890 and 1895. I’ve dug up some of the names, but as ages aren’t listed, I’m having to wade through a lot of records to try to pinpoint the right people. If and when, I’ll start on death records, and tracking down descendants.”

“You’ll be busy.”

“Gotta love the work. You’re right. It’s stopped.”

But they continued down the hall to the nursery. “Cold still,” Roz commented. “It doesn’t last long, though.” She moved to the crib, slid the blanket more neatly around the sleeping baby.

“Such a good baby,” she said quietly. “Sleeps right through the night most of the time. None of mine did at this age. She’s fine. We should leave her be.”

She stepped out, leaving the door open. They were at the top of the stairs when the clock began to bong.

“Midnight?” Roz looked at her watch to be certain. “I didn’t realize it was so late. Well, Happy New Year.”

“Happy New Year.” He took her hand before she could continue down the steps and, laying the other on her cheek, said, “Do you mind?”

“No, I don’t mind.”

His lips brushed hers, very lightly, a kind of civilized and polite gesture to commemorate the changing year. And somewhere in the east wing, Roz’s wing, a door slammed shut like a gunshot.

Though her heart jumped, she managed to speak evenly. “Obviously, she doesn’t approve.”

“More like she’s pissed off. And if she’s going to be pissed off, we might as well give her a good reason.”

He didn’t ask this time, just slid the hand that lay on her cheek around to cup the back of her neck. And this time his mouth wasn’t light, or polite, or civilized. There was a punch of heat, straight to her belly, as his mouth crushed down on hers, as his body pressed, hard against hers. She felt that sizzle zip through her blood, fast and reckless, and let herself ride on it for just one mad moment.

The door in the east wing slammed, again and again, and the clock continued to chime, madly now, well past the hour of twelve.

He’d known she’d taste like this, ripe and strong. More tang than sweetness. He’d wanted to feel those lips move against his as they were now, to discover just how that long, slender body fit to his. Now that he was, she settled inside him and made him want more.

But she eased back, her eyes open and direct. “Well. That ought to do it.”

“It’s a start.”

“I think it’d be best to keep everything . . . calm for tonight. I really should tidy up the parlor, and settle down up here, with Lily.”

“All right. I’ll get my notes and head home.”

In the parlor she loaded the cart while he gathered his things. “You’re a difficult woman to read, Rosalind.”

“I’m sure that’s true.”

“You know I want to stay, you know I want to take you to bed.”

“Yes, I know.” She looked over at him. “I don’t take lovers . . . I was going to say just that. That I don’t take lovers, but I’m going to say, instead, I don’t take them rashly, or lightly. So if I decide to take you as a lover, or let you take me, it will be serious business, Mitchell. Very serious business. That’s something both of us need to consider.”

“Ever just jump off the ledge, Roz?”

“I’ve been known to. But, except for the regrettable and rare occasion, I like to make certain I’m going to land on my feet. If I wasn’t interested, I’d tell you, flat out. I don’t play games in this arena. Instead, I’m telling you that I am interested, enough to think about it. Enough to regret, a little, that I’m no longer young and foolish enough to act without thinking.”

The phone rang. “That’ll be Hayley again. I need to get that or she’ll panic. Drive carefully.”

She walked out to get the phone, and heard, as she assured Hayley the baby was fine, was sleeping like an angel, had been no trouble at all, the front door close behind him.

EIGHT

ALITTLE DISTANCE , Mitch decided, was in order. The woman was a paradox, and since there was no finite solution to a paradox, it was best accepted for what it was—instead of puzzling over it until blood leaked out of your ears.

So he’d try a little distance where he could funnel his energies into puzzles other than the enigmatic Rosalind Harper.

He had plenty of legwork, or, more accurately, butt work. A few hours on his computer and he could verify the births and deaths and marriages listed in the Harper family Bible. He’d already generated a chart of the family ancestry, using his on-line and his courthouse information.

Clients liked charts. Beyond that, they were tools for him, as the copies of family pictures were, as letters were. He pinned everything onto a huge board. Two in this case. One for his office in his apartment, and one in the library at Harper House.

Pictures, old photos, old letters, diaries, scribbled family recipes, all of those things brought the people alive for him. When they were alive for him, when he began to envision their daily routines, their habits, their flaws and grievances, they mattered to him more than any job or project could matter.

He could lose hours paging through Elizabeth Harper’s gardening notes, or the baby book she’d kept on Roz’s father. How else would he know the man who’d sired Roz had suffered from celiac at three months, or had taken his first steps ten months later?

It was the details, the small bits, that made the past full, and immediate.

And in the wedding photo of Elizabeth and Reginald Junior, he could see Rosalind in her grandfather. The dark hair, the long eyes, the strong facial bones.

What else had he passed to her, and through her to her children, this man she barely remembered?

Business acumen for one, Mitch concluded. From other details, those small bits, found in clippings, in household records, he gained a picture of a man who’d had a sharp skill for making money, who’d avoided the fate of many of his contemporaries in the stock market crash. A careful man, and one who’d preserved the family home and holdings.

Yet wasn’t there a coolness about him? Mitch thought as he studied the photographs on his board. A remoteness that showed in his eyes. More than just the photographic style of the day.

Perhaps it came from being born wealthy—the only son on whose shoulders the responsibilities fell.

“What,” Mitch wondered aloud, “did you know about Amelia? Did you ever meet her, in the flesh? Or was she already dead, already just a spirit in this house when your time came around?”

Someone knew her, he thought. Someone spoke to her, touched her, knew her face, her voice.

And someone who did lived or worked in Harper House.

Mitch moved to a search of the servants he had by full names.

It took time, and didn’t include the myriad other possibilities. Amelia had been a guest, a servant whose name was not included—or had been expunged from family records—a relative’s relative, a friend of the family.

He could speculate, of course, that if a guest, a friend, a distant relation had died in the house, the information would have trickled down, and her identity would be known.

Then again, that was speculation, and didn’t factor in the possibility of scandal, and the tendency to hush such matters up.

Or the fact that she’d been no one important to the Harpers, had died in her sleep, and no one considered it worth discussing.

And it was just another paradox, he supposed as he leaned back from his work, that he, a rational, fairly logical-thinking man, was spending considerable time and effort to research and identify a ghost.

The trick was not to think of her that way, but to think of her as a living, breathing woman, a woman who had been born, lived a life, dressed, ate, laughed, cried, walked, and talked.

She had existed. She had a name. It was his job to findwho ,what ,when .Why was just the bonus question.

He dug the sketch out of his file, studied the image Roz had created of a young, thin woman with a mass of curly hair and eyes full of misery. And this is how they’d dated her, he thought with a shake of his head. By a dress and a hairstyle.

Not that it wasn’t a good sketch. He’d only seen Amelia once, and she hadn’t looked calm and sad like this, but wild and mad.

The dress could have been ten, even twenty years old. Or brand-new. The hairstyle a personal choice or a fashion statement. It was impossible to pinpoint age or era on such, well, sketchy information.

And yet, from his research so far, he tended to think they were close to the mark.

The talk of dreams, the bits of information, the lore itself appeared to have its roots during Reginald Harper’s reign.

Reginald Harper, he thought, kicking back in his chair to stare at the ceiling. Reginald Edward Harper, born 1851, the youngest of four children born to Charles Daniel Harper and Christabel Westley Harper. Second and only surviving son. Older brother, Nathanial died July 1864, at age eighteen, during the Battle of Bloody Bridge in Charlestown.

“Married Beatrice . . .” He rummaged through his notes again. Yes, there it is, 1880. Five children. Charlotte, born 1881, Edith Anne, 1883, Katherine, 1885, Victoria, 1886, and Reginald Junior, 1892.”

Big gap between the last two kids, considering the pattern beforehand, he thought, and noted down possibilities of miscarriages and/or stillbirths.

Strong possibilities with the factors of unreliable birth control, and the natural assumption that Reginald would have wanted a son to continue the family name.